Creación de un ambiente propicio

12

See article By K, Education as a Mission Agency –in-Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, January, 1884. Vol. IX No.97. The author explicitly bears out the missionaries’ intention of using education, even of a secular nature to win over people into the religion. 13

Sonia F. Graham, Government and Mission Education in NorthernNigeria 1900-1919

(Ibadan: Ibadan University press, 1966), 80. 14

Discussions with Alhaji Safi Jimba. (Shamaki of Ilorin). 11-7-2012. 15

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garner experience and contacts with the rest of the world.16 These were utilized in the reformations that they laid the foundation during the colonial period. Muslim missionaries have always played a very important role in the spread of the religion and for the most part had been responsible for the spread of Islam especially in Yoruba areas.17 These missionaries were sometimes traders who combined trading with scholarship, either learning or passing on the knowledge wherever their trade took them. Some were purely on missionary endeavor; preaching and teaching, surviving as spiritual consultants to the people. Accelerated communication with the rest of the world opened up by the colonial regime helped in venting out the scholarship of Ilorin scholars.18 By the turn of the century and early twentieth century, Ilorin had been saturated with scholars who needed avenues to express scholarship developed for close to a century when the scholars had lesser need or opportunities to move out of the town. The nineteenth century was the period of inpouring of scholars needed to bolster the new Muslim city; the twentieth century opened the gate for the outpouring of the scholarship garnered over the decades. This does not mean that the scholars remained exclusively concerned with Ilorin and had no relationship with the outside world in the nineteenth century. Despite the turbulence of the nineteenth century, when Ilorin was at war with many Yoruba towns,19 her scholars were also carrying out their missions in those places when the Christian missions were also making inroads from the coast.20 The concern and attempt of the Lagos Muslims to mediate between the government of Lagos and Ilorin before it was eventually colonized indicates that the Muslims of Lagos were well aware of the deep preoccupations of the Ilorins with religion and were seen as mentors.21They tried to mediate between the British at the coast and Ilorin over disagreement on boundary, peace and trading issues. The Ilorins were the models for the Yoruba Muslims and were highly cherished when such missionaries choose

Colonial economy while posing a danger for Muslim identity also provided new contexts for opportunities for new religious movements with influences from beyond the local contexts. Rüdiger Seesemann, The Divine Flood Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23-24. 17

The following works have dealt extensively on the role of Ilorin scholars in the spread of Islam among the Yoruba- Gbadamosi, The Growth of Islam; Nasiru, ‘Islamic Learning’ ; Reichmuth, ‘A Regional Centre.’

18 _{Brenner alluded to this in his study of Islamic knowledge system in Mali. Brenner,} Controlling Knowledge, 7.

19

The following works have treated Ilorin war and diplomacy in the nineteenth century. H. O. Danmole, ‘Crises, Warfare and Diplomacy in nineteenth century Ilorin’ in Toyin Falola and Robin Law (eds.), Warfare, and Diplomacy inPre-colonial Nigeria (Madison: University of Wisconsin); Safi Jimba, Iwe Itan Ilorin; Johnson, History of the Yoruba. 20

Reichmuth, ‘A Regional Centre,’ 239. 21

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their town or city for missionary stations. Some of the scholars had also travelled north to Hausa region to acquire knowledge.22

The missionary educationists of Ilorin could be classified into two main categories. In the first category were those whose missionary activities were itinerant in nature. They resided permanently in Ilorin but often traveled to other towns on preaching tours. Some were also engaged in the prayer economy,23 serving as spiritual consultants to people. They may have personal houses where they stayed when they visited particular towns (especially after long association with the town), while some stayed with friends or the people who had invited them. This class of missionaries was always shuttling between Ilorin and other towns. In this category we can class Sheikh Abubakr Ikokoro and Sheikh Kamalud-deen al Adabiyy and many others like them.

In the second category are those who left llorin to live permanently and established their schools in the other towns, returning to Ilorin only occasionally. However, they kept contact with Ilorin and occasionally returned to Ilorin on visits. In this category are scholars like Sheikh Adam Abdullahi Al Iluri who began his reformist educational career in Abeokuta, before making Agege in Lagos his base, Sheikh Khidr Apaokagi 24 based in Owo, and Sheikh Yahaya Adafila 25 based at Okene

Al Iluri, Lamahat al Ballur, 33. 23

Benjamin F. Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy –History and authority in a Malian town (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 153-180. He used this term to qualify income derived from religious praxis of the Sufi clerics of Senegal. Lagos (Eko), then the capital of Nigeria and the major commercial city of the country, and up to the present forms an important city in the life of Ilorin scholars who are highly revered and honored there. Sheikh Kamalud-deen and Sheikh Adam both found support in this city for their reform movements. It is a major center for the prayer economy where scholars exercise their intercessory role for the people. Unlike Ilorin where almost every household has its own scholars and financial reward for such activity is limited, Lagos is more profitable for the use of intercessory prayers as a means of income for the scholars.

24

A student of Sheikh Muhammad Kamalud-deen al Adabiyy: after years of tutelage and experience in missionary activities under guidance of his teacher, he eventually made Owo in the then Ondo province his base in 1945. This came about as a result of the request of the Owo people to Sheikh Kamalud-deen to send them a reliable teacher. In 1955 Sheikh Apaokagi established Mahad Adabiyya in Owo. Like his teacher, he too would send many of his students as missionaries to many part of the country as far as old Bendel State and Port Harcourt in the Niger delta area of Nigeria. He was appointed as the Mufti of Ilorin towards the end of his life when he retired to Ilorin. His teacher had been the mufti before him. He passed away on 22 February, 2013. See the following works for mention of his career. Bamigboye, ‘The Contribution of Sheikh,’ 39; Adisa-Onikoko, The Legacy of, 93; Sheikh Khidru Salahudeen Apaokagi, The Development of Islam In Rivers State (Ilorin: Alabi Printing Production, 2001), 1; Discussions with Alfa Mumeen Ayara. 10-9-2012; and Imam Shehu Ahmad Warah. 4-9-2012.

25

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where he won many converts in the first half of the twentieth century and helped to spread Islam among the Ebira.26

Sheikh Yahaya (Tajudeen) was a student of Sheikh Tajul Adab who worked for the Native Authority as a treasurer, an example of the scholars employed by the colonial authority on account of their literacy in Arabic.27 He had followed on the heels of other Ilorin scholars who carried out missionary work among the Ebira, such as alfa Abdulsalam credited with establishing the first Qur’anic School among the Ebira in 1903. When Sheikh Yahaya left colonial service, he was encouraged to settle in Okene by alfa Abdulsalam as a missionary among the Ebira. He was close to the court and was appointed the Chief Imam of Okene.28 When he first arrived in Okene, he had written to his teacher in Ilorin on the status of Islam among the Ebira, which he noted was weak.29

When these scholars moved out of Ilorin, their encounter with modern western mode of doing things influenced their thinking as they tried to adjust their Islamic education system to the new phenomenon of colonial regime. Lagos in particular but also some other Yoruba towns were influential on the reforms in the pedagogy of Islamic education that took place in the colonial period. In response to the challenge of colonial regime and western education, there emerged one after the other a trifurcate response from the scholars of Ilorin. All of the three streams of educational reform in Ilorin began outside of Ilorin, when the reformist scholars were outside Ilorin on missionary endeavors. These reforms they later introduced into Ilorin.

Lagos as the commercial and administrative capital of the country was particularly attractive to Ilorin scholars. It has been mentioned earlier the influence of commercial activities in the spread of Islam and its education. Most citizens of

Abdul-Lateef Adekilekun, Atharul-Shaikh Al-Labeeb Sheikh Tajul- Adab Sh’iran Wanathran, (Ilorin, Ibrahim Kewulere Press, 2007), 9. He is reputed as always praying for masquerades thus; ‘May Allah guide you,’ anytime he meets them on the way. The children of these masquerades later became Muslims. This is seen as the answer to his prayers. 27

Muhammad, ‘History of the Spread,’ 228; Al Iluri, Lamahat al Ballur fi, 16., has mentioned how the colonial authority little had choice but to recourse to these scholars until western literate scholars were trained and these replaced them.

28 _{Aremu Abdulganiy, ‘The Contribution of Ilorin Scholars to the Development of Islam in} Kabba 1915-2000’ (B.A. Long Essay: Islamic Studies-Department of Religions, University of Ilorin, 2007), 13.

29

See his letter in the Appendix I, for the Arabic and English translation in -Muhammad, ‘History of the Spread,’ 416-417. See also Reichmuth, Islamische Bildung, 231. He addressed his teacher as Shaikh al Islam and Mahdi. This represents the widespread of expectation of tha Mahdi among West African Muslims at this period. See Seesemann, The Divine Flood, 24.

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Lagos by then had become Muslims. Ilorin scholars thus found opportunities to serve as clerics and teachers of religion among them. They in turn respected the Ilorins as the leading light of Islam among the Yoruba speaking people. Unlike Ilorin, which had just come under the influence of colonialism, Lagos has had decades of experience under colonial rule and had been exposed to western ways for long. Even though Lagos Muslims had problems with western education at the initial stage, they had acquiesced early enough and had begun to run their own schools for Muslims in conjunction with the colonial authority.30

Religion was not a state religion in Lagos and thus religion was more of a private affair for Muslims unlike in Ilorin where religion is infused to every facet of life. Muslims and Christians were also living harmoniously together. Lagos Muslims had made contact with the wider Muslim world as shown with the opening of Shitta Bey Mosque in Lagos with a representative of the Sultan of Turkey in attendance.31 Syrian traders were also at the coast, exposing Muslims to Arab Muslims like never before. This cosmopolitan ambience influenced two of the three pedagogical schools that later emerged in Ilorin.

While in the late twentieth century, western educated Muslims, especially the intellectuals in western institutions of higher learning articulated the Islamization of knowledge theory, drawing on the experience of the wider Muslim world,32 some of the reformist scholars of Ilorin active in the colonial period could be said to have engaged in modernization praxes without much theorization as the later western institution based scholars would do. The advocates of Islamization of knowledge aim at bringing all knowledge, especially those dominated by the West, into an Islamic episteme.33 They also legitimized its form and content to a large extent and can be seen as part of the globalization of the western school pattern of frontal classroom teaching, organized in different classes of ascending age, which is adapted in the madaris.

The traditional Islamic scholars, on their own, not grounded in western epistemology, simply responded to changing times, realigning Islamic education to contemporary situations as a safeguard against the domineering western education

Gbadamosi, The Growth of, 176. 31 _{Gbadamosi, The Growth of, 168.} 32

See Rafiu Ibrahim Adebayo, Islamization of Knowledge, global developments, individual efforts and institutional contributions (Kaduna: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2008) for Islamization efforts in Nigeria.

33

See the following works for the discourse on Islamization of knowledge, Al Attas, Aims and Objective; Galadanci (ed.), Islamisation of Knowledge; Al Attas Muhammad Naquib,

Islam and Secularism (kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1993); Siddiqi, ‘Islamization of Knowledge.’

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system. These praxes were pragmatic and proactive strategies these scholars deployed without much theorization (at least in the western academic sense of it)34 except by rooting their actions in the Qur’an and the Sunnah according to their understanding. Through these strategies, they defended their vocation; at the same time promoting it through some of the modern western methods as well as models from the Arab world.

As Ilorin scholars moved out of Ilorin on missionary activities, their exposure to external influences had some effects on the reformations they were to introduce to Islamic education with far reaching impacts. These influences include modern western ways of living, including its educational and religious system in private and public spheres. Greater communication with the wider world, including parts of the hitherto farther Muslim world, was also an influence. Starting with Sheikh Tajul Adab, his innovative ways began after he had sojourned around the coast and later returned to Ilorin. It was here that he probably came across illustrated Arabic textbooks that he introduced to his students in Ilorin.35 He foresaw the impacts the new phenomena of modernism would have on Muslims. Even though he was wary of some of the new phenomena like the colonial inspired alkali courts, he informed his students of the benefits that would come with the new realities, though only Sheikh Kamalud-deen seemed to have been fully aware of the import of this teaching. 36

Adabiyya

The first stream in the educational reforms that emerged in Ilorin was that of the Adabiyya School of pedagogy, rooted in the career of Sheikh Muhammad Jamiu Labib known as Sheikh Tajul Adab,37 as espoused by his Illustrious student, Sheikh Muhammad Kamalud-Deen Al Adaby. One of the most illustrious scholars to emerge at that definitive junction of colonial encounter in Ilorin: Sheikh Sheikh Tajul Adab was born in 1877 into a scholarly family of Malian ancestry, the earliest

Sheikh Adam engaged with these in his writings. See for example, Al Iluri, Al Islam fi Nijeriya, 152-154.

35

Reichmuth, ‘Literary Culture and Arabic,’; Shafii, ‘Thaqafatul Arabiya fi,’ 68. 36

Discussions with Alhaji Waliy Aliy-Kamal. June 2012.

37

For more on the career of this scholar see, Reichmuth, Islamische Bildung, 228-250; Abubakre and Reichmuth, ‘Ilorin and Nupe,’ 466 and Yusuf Adebola Bamigboye, ‘The Contribution of Sheikh Sheikh Tajul Adab to Arabic and Islamic Learning in Yorubaland’ (B.A. Arabic and Islamic Studies Department, University of Ibadan, 1987).

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missionaries of Islam among the Yoruba. The father was the fifth Imam Imale 38 (1900-1918) Abdulqadir.39 He was a most remarkable missionary and is highly referred and honoured among the scholars of Ilorin of the twentieth century. A number of myths and anecdotes were connected to him.40

As a teacher he taught many students who later became prominent scholars not only in Ilorin but also in other parts of Yoruba region and beyond. He graduated his first set of students in 1910 and a second set ten years later in 1920 in Ilorin.41 He is credited with a number of innovative practices such as the use of illustrated Arabic texts, which was controversial then 42 and conferment of titles on his students upon graduation.43 Among his prominent students is Imam Muhammad-Lawal Basil Augusto, one of the Brazilian returnee Muslims in Lagos. He was the first Muslim lawyer in Nigeria and actively promoted the acquisition of western education among Muslims. Bamigboye holds that Sheikh Tajul Adab might have learnt some English from him.44 This might be the earliest influence of western education among the Adabiyya scholars.

His pedagogy: Before the innovation for which he is much known and which his student Sheikh Kamalud-deen popularized, he was teaching in the old traditional way. He never had a purpose-built school nor taught using blackboard and his students sat on the ground. These aspects of him are what the followers of Sheikh

38 _{Sheikh Adisa-Onikoko, TheLegacy of Sheikh Muhammad Kamalud-deen al Adaby (Ilorin:} Sat Adis Press, 2008), 21. Imam Imale is the second ranked imam in Ilorin and deputizes for the Chief Imam.

39

Bamigboye, ‘The Contribution of Sheikh, 48; Musa Ali Ajetunmobi, ‘Contribution of Ilorin Scholars to the Development of Islam and Islamic Scholarship in Yorubaland’ –in- S.A. Jimoh, Ilorin: Centre of Learning (Ilorin: Jimson Publishers, 2006), 80.

40

Such as his having no teacher, collapsing time and space, praying on levitated mat, having an ability to understand any book and his unknown whereabouts for a decade. There were eschatological expectations regarding him as depicted in the letter written by Shaikh Yahaya Adafila mentioned earlier. See Abubakre and Reichmuth, ‘Ilorin and Nupe,’ 466; Al lluri,

Lamahat Al Ballur fi, 55-58; Bamigboye, ‘The Contribution of Sheikh,’ 8. 41

Adisa-Onikoko, The Legacy of Sheikh, 21. 42

Such as Durus Arabiyya and Al Tamrin Abbasi. He got these from Lagos. Hitherto the only forms of illustrated works found among scholars were the geometric illustrations on Qur’an and religious texts. Shafii, ‘Thaqafatul Arabiya fi,’ 68. For samples of such geometric illustrations, see Reichmuth, ‘Literary Culture and Arabic’.

43

Among his conferees were Sheikh Zakariya Bakini d.1935 (Alfa Omoda) with the title of Tajul Mumeen (Crown of believers); Sheikh Yahaya Adafila d.1956 (Alfa Okene) as Tajudeen (Crown of religion) and Sheikh Muhammad Habeebullah, the youngest of the lot as Kamalud-deen d.2005 (Perfecter of religion) among others. Adisa-Onikoko, The Legacy, 22 44

Lawal Augusto was among the Muslim youths who formed the Literary Society of Nigeria in Lagos, to encourage Muslims to embrace western education in 1915. In 1924, he founded the society, Jamaatul Islamiya of Nigeria. Bamigboye, ‘The Contribution of Sheikh,’ 67.

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Yusuf Agbaji 45 hold onto; that the teacher of their teacher (Tajul Mu’meen) said this was how Sheikh Tajul Adab taught.46 It is possible that some of his methods changed in the last one and half decade of his life, corresponding with the time Sheikh Kamalud-Deen spent with him and when he had returned from the unaccounted-for journey, if we take into account the difference in the two pedagogical schools connected to him, namely Zumratul Adabiyya and Zumratul Mu’meen. Most probably, his travels were along the coast where he might have come across new ideas from around the Muslim world. It is possible he had plans along lines Sheikh Kamalud-deen later adopted but he did not live long enough to